


there's a red mark where my mouth should be

by waveridden



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast Fusion, Background Hadrian/Rosana, M/M, Season: Spring in Hieron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21873559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveridden/pseuds/waveridden
Summary: Hella says, “There’s a beast in the woods.”
Relationships: Hadrian & Hella Varal, Hadrian/Samot (Friends at the Table)
Kudos: 14
Collections: 2019 AU December Challenge





	there's a red mark where my mouth should be

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of the AUcember series, a self-made challenge where I try to write a new AU one-shot every day. You can read all of the AUcember fics in the collection linked above. Title is from Repair Repair by Grace Lightman.
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS apply for animal death (hunting) and light semi-graphic violence - specifically, the wolf kills a couple of people, and someone is stabbed with a sword. It's nothing more dramatic or graphic than appears in canon.
> 
> All my love to Tam, who's always good making at fairytale AUs.

Hella says, “There’s a beast in the woods.”

Hadrian exchanges a skeptical look with Rosana - he doesn’t mean for it to be so openly dubious, but he can’t help himself. Hella isn’t normally prone to this particular kind of dramatics. When he looks back at her, she’s scowling at him. “A beast,” he says, just to be sure.

“Yes, a beast,” Hella says impatiently. “A lot of people have been saying it, way too many for it to be a coincidence.”

“Coincidences happen.”

“Not people talking about a giant wolf.”

“A giant wolf?” Hadrian repeats. “And you’re, what, going to kill it?”

“No,” Hella says, “we’re going to kill it. You’re my backup.”

“I’m retired.”

“I’m asking you to come out of retirement.”

Hadrian glances at Rosana. “I don’t-”

“We’ll talk about it,” Rosana says, voice so even and measured that Hadrian knows that she’s upset. “Thank you, Hella.”

“I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t serious,” Hella says, voice low. It’s as close as they’re going to get to an apology from her, Hadrian knows.

Rosana just nods. “Thank you,” she says again, and waits for Hella to leave.

Hadrian swallows. He doesn’t want to go. He’s retired. But he doesn’t want Hella to go alone.

Rosana looks at him as soon as Hella’s gone. “I won’t stop you,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean I want you to go.”

“I know,” Hadrian sighs. “I know. But I think I have to.”

“Okay,” Rosana says, voice soft. “Be careful.”

He takes her hand, squeezes it, lifts it to his mouth to brush his lips against it. “I will.”

#

He doesn’t hear what happens. Hella doesn’t even so much as scream. All he knows is that they split up for a matter of minutes and when he comes back to camp there’s blood in the snow, and a trail.

Hadrian follows the trail, because it’s Hella and he doesn’t have another choice. It’s not terribly long, maybe half a mile, and he can see footsteps in the snow alongside the pawprints. It doesn’t look like she was dragged or anything, and it doesn’t look like she’s bleeding out.

The trail ends at a dilapidated mansion, with countless claw marks gouged in the outside walls. Hadrian doesn’t know what kind of a wolf lives in a mansion, but he pushes the door open anyways. It creaks loudly, loudly enough that he figures any subtlety is gone, so he calls out, “Hella?”

“Hadrian,” Hella shouts, from far away. Something about her voice is too strained, too distressed, and it makes his heart clench.

Hadrian moves slowly through the mansion. It definitely looks like a wolf lives here: scratches on the walls and furniture, fur everywhere. Everything seems old, like it hasn’t been used in decades. It was clearly a home once, but it clearly hasn’t been in a long time.

“Hella!” he shouts again, and this time when she answers it’s easy to tell which room she’s in. He starts running, and he finds her in a bedroom, slumped against the wall. “Hella-”

“You shouldn’t have come here,” she gasps, but she hugs him fiercely when he drops to his knees in front of her. There’s what looks like a bite in her arm, not so bad that she can’t move it but bad enough that Hadrian can feel blood seeping into his clothing, warm against his neck. “You should’ve-”

“I absolutely shouldn’t have.”

“It won’t let me leave.”

“We need to bandage your arm.”

“Hadrian,” she says pleadingly, and then stills. Hadrian turns around slowly.

The wolf is massive. Hadrian’s only seen a couple of wolves before, but either they were small or this one is exceptionally large. It towers over both him and Hella, kneeling on the floor.

“Let me help her,” Hadrian says. His voice shakes, and Hella grabs one of his hands. He squeezes it tight, clutching it close to his chest. “Please, let me fix her.”

The wolf growls loudly, warningly.

“It won’t let me leave,” Hella repeats, a strange note of despair in her voice.

Hadrian looks the wolf in its eyes. It looks back, steady and not nearly as animal as he would expect.

“If I stay,” Hadrian says, “will you let her leave?”

The wolf steps out of the doorway.

“Hadrian,” Hella says urgently. “Hadrian, you can’t, Rosana and Benjamin-”

“They’ll trust you to come find me, and so do I.”

“But-”

“You need medicine. You can’t stay here.”

“Can’t you help me and leave?”

“I can’t leave you here,” Hadrian says. “I can’t, Hella-”

She throws her arms around him again and exhales into his neck, and Hadrian understands. Hella doesn’t want to die here. He can’t say he wants to either, but he’s pretty sure he’ll be better off than her.

“I’ll come back,” she says. “I will.”

“I know,” Hadrian says.

#

The wolf brings him food. Animals it hunts and kills, mostly, but occasionally it comes back with things like loaves of bread and crates of vegetables.

“Are you stealing these?” Hadrian demands, the second or third time a crate shows up. The wolf just stares at him, and he shakes his head. “We can’t just take food for people. I can hunt and forage for myself-”

The wolf growls. Hadrian glares at it, even though that’s undoubtedly a foolish thing to do. “I’m not going to leave. I’ll just come with you or something. I’m not going to let you keep scaring people.”

And the strangest thing of all is: then he does. He gets to go with the wolf on a hunting trip, sword in hand, and bring back things that he foraged for himself. He doesn’t know what to make of that, of this strange, intelligent wolf. But he thinks that it might trust him.

#

The first dream happens a week after he gets to the mansion.

He’s in a version of the mansion, but this one hasn’t been ravaged by the wolf. In fact, it looks much newer than the real mansion. All of the furniture is brightly colored and whole, and the counters are unbroken and polished. He runs a hand along one of the walls, which is newly painted in an almost blinding shade of white.

“It’s beautiful,” says a voice behind him.

Hadrian whirls around. “Who-” he says, before his voice dies in his throat.

The man standing behind him is not tall, but he’s elegant, carrying himself with the posture of someone important. He has long blond hair past his shoulders that ripples when he tilts his head, a strange and analytical gesture. “You’re the newest one the wolf has brought,” he says.

Hadrian swallows. “I am.”

“Not injured, I hope.”

“Not at all.”

“Why have you stayed?”

“It won’t let me leave.”

“Hm,” the man says. “I suppose.”

“I haven’t seen you before,” Hadrian says cautiously.

The man smiles, there and gone in an instant. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t have. You’re dreaming right now. I don’t exist outside of these dreams.”

“Oh,” Hadrian says. “That’s… I’m sorry. That must be difficult.”

“It is,” he says. “I’m happy to have company again.”

“Has the wolf brought people before?”

“Not often. Not recently.”

Hadrian nods slowly. “My name is Hadrian,” he says. “I don’t know how long I’m going to be here. My friend is looking for me. She’s going to be back soon.”

“The mansion can be hard to find,” the man warns. “You shouldn’t expect her to be back soon.”

“I don’t. But I still expect her to come back.”

“You have that much faith in your friend?”

“Of course,” Hadrian says, surprised despite himself. This man doesn’t know Hella. He has no way of knowing her life with Hadrian, full of sparring sessions and quiet adventures and trying to find peace after they were done with violence. “Always.”

“Good,” the man says. The dream is beginning to blur around the edges. “You’re lucky to have that kind of faith in someone, Hadrian.”

“Wait,” Hadrian says desperately. The mansion is fading, but the man isn’t. “You didn’t say your name.”

He smiles. “I am Samot,” he says. “I hope to see you again soon.”

He wakes up with a gasp, reaching for his sword out of instinct. It’s there, albeit sheathed, and he ends up clutching at the hilt for a moment, trying to let the weight of it ground him. But it’s still hard to focus, because when he closes his eyes, he can see Samot’s smile behind his eyelids.

#

His days fall into a strange routine. He spends his mornings wandering the mansion, going everywhere except the places that the wolf tries to prevent him from going. He spends his afternoons with the wolf, sometimes on the mansion grounds and sometimes hunting. He’s getting really sick of simple meals, but he’s never been good at anything more complicated than he can make over a campfire. The mansion has a kitchen, but it’s dirty and out of use, and he never bothers cleaning it.

And his nights belong to Samot. It’s a strange situation, the pair of them. He doesn’t answer everyone of Hadrian’s questions, but he answers most of them. He’s an inventor who fancies himself a poet - or perhaps it’s the other way around, he says laughingly. He was married, although he doesn’t truly remember his husband or his son. He prefers red wine to white, and part of that is because he thinks the color of red wine is more romantic.

He asks about Hadrian, too, and Hadrian tells him about Rosana and Benjamin, about Hella, about living as a chaplain in a city with no real need for a chaplain. He talks about trying to learn to cook and almost burning the kitchen down, earning him a lifetime ban from Rosana. He talks about missing his son’s formative years during his time as an adventurer.

“Hadrian,” Samot says one day. “I have a question that I hope you don’t think is foolish.”

“I’ve asked you plenty of foolish questions,” Hadrian points out. The two of them are in the drawing room of the mansion. Samot doesn’t like it here; he thinks the decor is tasteless. Hadrian likes it because it’s the only place with room enough for both of them to sit together comfortably. “What is it?”

Samot sighs. “Why haven’t you just killed the wolf?”

Hadrian leans back, stunned. “What?”

“Think about it,” Samot says impatiently. “You’re waiting for Hella, who sounds like quite a daring woman, but you’re quite a daring man. It’s large and intelligent, but you seem like a capable man. You have your sword, you’ve told me the wolf hasn’t taken it.” He pauses, takes a breath.

There’s something he’s not saying. “What else,” Hadrian says, not quite a question.

Samot shakes his head. “I think the wolf is what is keeping me trapped here,” he says, with a strange, bitter rage in his voice. “I don’t know how, or why, or what magic it’s using. I don’t remember coming here. But it must be. And I am tired of being here, Hadrian. You must be too.”

“I am,” Hadrian says, and it’s not quite a lie. He misses his wife, his son, his life. “It… I’ll think about it.”

Samot snorts, a soft and familiar noise. “I understand your hesitation, but forgive me if I don’t excuse it.”

“I don’t need you to excuse it,” Hadrian says, more sharply than he intended. “I’ll make my decision in my time, on my terms.”

“As you wish,” Samot says, and Hadrian wakes up just like that, without so much as a chance to say goodbye.

#

There’s a room on the south side of the mansion that the wolf has never let Hadrian into. It’s a strange, arbitrary border, one that Hadrian is surprised that the wolf guards as zealously as it does, but he’s always respected it.

The morning after Samot asks him to kill the wolf, he goes to that room. The wolf doesn’t stop him; maybe it’s asleep, or maybe it doesn’t care. Either way, Hadrian pushes his way into the room, holding his breath every step of the way.

It’s a master bedroom, he can tell right away. It’s huge, and there’s a massive window letting sunlight in. It looks old, of course, but newer than the rest of the mansion. There are hardly many scratch marks, hardly as many rips in the upholstery.

There are photographs, too, which Hadrian notices with some surprise. They’re old and faded, but he picks one up to squint at it. It’s a picture of a boy, light brown skin and curly hair and a gap-toothed smile. It makes him miss Benjamin fiercely, so he forces himself to put it down.

The next one he picks up is a picture of a family, clearly taken for some kind of holiday. That same boy is there, a couple years older and teeth slightly straighter, a sardonic edge to his smile now, but still a smile. There are two men standing behind him, one hand on each of his shoulders. One of them is dark-skinned and broad-shouldered, with a warmth to his smile that Hadrian is fascinated by.

The other man in the photograph is Samot.

His hair is longer, and he looks so small next to the other man that Hadrian almost doesn’t recognize him. But it has to be him. He has the same eyes, and the same wicked tilt to his mouth.

There’s a rustling behind Hadrian. He’s not at all surprised to see the wolf standing there, looking at him. It whines, a strange and plaintive noise that he hasn’t heard before.

Hadrian swallows. “Samot used to live here,” he says, heart pounding. “He doesn’t even remember it. Why didn’t you want me to know?”

The wolf pushes forward, bending its head to push its nose into Hadrian’s hand. He runs his hand up its snout absently, resting it on top of its head. “Do you know him?” he asks tentatively, and the wolf makes a noise, almost like a snort. Almost like the noise that Samot makes when Hadrian says something foolish.

“Oh, fuck,” Hadrian says. “Oh, shit,  _ Samot? _ ”

The wolf draws itself up to full height. Hadrian stares it directly in the eye, trying to make any of this make sense. “He asked me to kill you,” he says dumbly, and the wolf growls. “I mean, I’m not going to. Especially not now. Why doesn’t he remember in the dreams that he’s the wolf?”

The wolf makes a noise that Hadrian, frankly, can’t even begin to parse.

“Sure,” he says, because what the hell else is there to say? Samot is the wolf, Samot doesn’t know he’s the wolf, Samot was here and can’t come back. “Well… I have some things to think about.”

The wolf makes another noise and presses its nose against Hadrian’s other hand, where he’s still holding the family photo.

“That’s your husband and son,” he murmurs, and it’s not a question. Carefully, he sets the photo on the floor. “I’m going to… leave you to this.”

The wolf doesn’t respond. Hadrian leaves quietly, mind still racing.

#

“Have you thought about what I’ve asked?” Samot says as soon as Hadrian appears. The two of them are in the dining room today, glasses of wine already on the table.

Hadrian swallows. He’s been trying to decide all day if he wants to tell Samot about the wolf, if he wants to lie and say he’ll kill the wolf and make a run for it, if there’s a right answer to this at all. He’s beginning to think there’s not.

Samot arches an eyebrow at him. “Well?”

“I can’t,” Hadrian forces himself to say.

“Can’t?” Samot repeats incredulously. “And why’s that?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You can’t tell me?” He snorts, but it sounds like the wolf, and Hadrian flinches despite meaning to. Samot frowns. “What was that?”

“It’s nothing,” Hadrian says, too quickly, but that can’t be helped. “It’s - I need you to trust me.”

“You won’t tell me what’s happening.”

“Samot,” he pleads. “I can fix this.”

Samot looks at him. For the first time since they’ve met, it makes Hadrian feel cold.

“You had better have a good reason,” he says at last, and the mansion vanishes, and Hadrian is alone in his dreams for the first time in weeks.

#

The wolf is nowhere to be seen the next morning. Hadrian looks everywhere, even the bedroom on the south side of the mansion, but there’s nothing, not even a trail leading away from the house for him to follow.

So he leaves.

It is, he tells himself, for the best. He can’t help Samot from the mansion, neither the wolf nor the man. There’s something magical going on here, and he doesn’t know enough to break this curse. If he can get home, he can find Sunder and bring her here, or find someone else. But he can’t do anything himself.

He doesn’t have time to say wait around and goodbye to the wolf, so he leaves his sword instead. It’s a foolish move, probably, but he means it as a reminder. As a piece of himself. As a promise that he will come back.

He’s never had the best sense of direction, so he squints and figures out which way south is and starts moving. In the worst case, he’ll find a road to another village and make his way home.

The best case goes as follows:

“Hadrian?” Hella says, full of disbelief.

Hadrian whirls around. He hasn’t been paying as much attention as he should’ve been, instead thinking about wolves and beautiful men and trying to find a trail. So he didn’t notice that he was wandering towards a campsite. But he surely is, and it’s Hella there, staring at him, like she’s seeing a ghost.

He swallows. “Is your arm okay?”

“My  _ arm? _ ” Hella shouts, and the next thing he knows she’s flying at him, squeezing him in the tightest hug she’s ever given him. “You asshole, I thought I left you to be eaten by a giant wolf, nobody’s seen you in a month-”

“A month?” Hadrian repeats. He supposes that makes sense, but it doesn’t feel like a month. “Hella, it- I need your help.”

She huffs loudly. “My help,” she repeats. “With what?”

And so Hadrian tells her. About the wolf, and the photographs, and the man in his dreams. She listens to him, brows furrowed, head tilted suspiciously.

“We have to save him,” he finishes, and then looks at her. She looks guilty. “Why do you look like that?”

“Like what,” Hella says, but she’s stalling, he can tell.

Hadrian frowns and looks behind her. It’s definitely a campsite. In fact, it looks like a campsite far too big for one person. It looks like the kind of things soldiers would set up.

“Hella,” he says, dread building in his stomach. “What did you do?”

She looks at him fiercely. “I thought you were dead,” she says, soft and vicious. “I thought I left you to die. I thought this was going to be a mission for vengeance.”

“Oh, Hella,” Hadrian murmurs. He feels sick. “How many?”

“Only a dozen.”

“We have to help him.”

“Are you sure I can’t talk you out of that?”

“He was kind to me,” Hadrian says, and he’s not sure if he means the wolf robbing random people so he could eat or the man listening to him in his dreams. “He was good to me.”

Hella shakes her head. “Okay,” she says, and Hadrian feels warmed through. “Let’s go save the fucking beast, I guess.”

#

Most of the soldiers are already dead when they get back to the mansion. Hadrian doesn’t look too closely at the bodies, stepping past them towards the mansion. He can hear shouting.

“Stay behind me,” Hella snaps. She’d already laid into Hadrian for leaving his sword behind, and she was right. He misses the weight of it in his hand, and also the security of being able to defend himself.

They make their way into the mansion, slowly. It’s as dilapidated as ever, except for the fresh blood splashed on the walls and floor. It makes Hadrian feel sick. The mansion isn’t home, but it is Samot’s home, and it looks awful like this.

“Varal,” someone shouts, and Hella whirls, sword raised. It’s one of the soldiers, and he’s facing off against the wolf - against  _ Samot. _ “Lend me a hand.”

“We were wrong,” Hella says, voice clear with conviction, and Hadrian’s heart aches with love for her. “Let him go.”

“He killed our men!”

“He killed your men. I think that means I get my deposit back.”

The soldier shouts wordlessly and charges at them. Hadrian bends down and picks up the sword from a dead man’s body - lighter than he prefers, but it’ll do - and shifts to a ready stance.

“Get the wolf out of here,” Hella says to him, and rushes forward.

Hadrian runs over to Samot. “Are you hurt?” he demands. Samot just whines at him, which isn’t a terribly helpful answer, but Hadrian can’t see any wounds. Only blood on his muzzle and in his teeth. “We have to get out of here.”

Samot starts towards the back door, and Hadrian follows him, sword at the ready. “Hella and I set a rendezvous,” he says, and he’s about to lead Samot away when suddenly the wolf begins growling next to him, looking at the shadows off to one side.

Hadrian whirls around and lifts his sword just in time to block a swing from another soldier. “Shit,” he gasps, but the soldier attacks again, and again. Samot leaps at them, but he can’t get too close; the sword flashes dangerously close to Samot’s underbelly, and that’s all it takes for him to back off.

Unfortunately, it’s also all that it takes for the soldier’s attention to shift. Hadrian can feel it immediately: the slide of attention from him to the giant wolf beside him. The soldier begins advancing towards Samot, and none of Hadrian’s desperate attacks seem to divert them.

From inside, Hella shouts something triumphant. Hadrian takes a deep breath and redoubles his efforts. “You can’t kill him,” he says, and it’s enough for the soldier to turn away. “You can’t.”

“Can’t I?” says the soldier, and charges. Hadrian lifts his sword, but it’s too slow, he knows it’s too slow. He takes a moment to be thankful that Hella won’t see this as it happens, and then the sword stabs into his abdomen.

Hadrian falls to his knees and claps his hands over his side, a weak attempt to staunch the blood flow. Distantly he hears the wolf howl, a vicious, mournful sound he’s never heard. He must close his eyes, because when he opens them he’s lying on the ground, and the soldier is gone.

“Hella,” he rasps, and then coughs. Everything tastes like blood. That’s not a good sign. “Fuck. Hella-”

“Hadrian,” a voice gasps. It’s not Hella’s.

There are dark spots at the edges of Hadrian’s vision, but he forces himself to turn towards the voice. It hurts so badly to move even that much that he gasps. He’s going to be unconscious soon, he can tell.

The last thing he sees is a man reaching toward him, a man with blond hair and blood on his mouth.

#

Samot is not in any of Hadrian’s dreams. He doesn’t know what to make of that.

#

Rosana says, “Next time, the answer is no.”

“Next time I’m not arguing,” Hadrian mumbles. Everything is hazy, and his side still hurts, but it seems like he must’ve been healed, at least partially. “M’I home?”

“We’re at Sunder’s.”

“Okay,” Hadrian says. “I’m sorry. I’m gonna live, right?”

Rosana’s face crumples, but she leans forward and rests her hand on Hadrian’s chest, over his beating heart. “Yes,” she says quietly. “Yes, love, you’re going to live. And I’m happy you’re home.”

“Me too,” Hadrian says, and closes his eyes. “Is Hella okay?”

“She’s fine. She and that man brought you all the way back here.”

Hadrian cracks one eye open. “Man?”

“Said his name was Samot.” Rosana arches an eyebrow at him. “He seemed very concerned about you.”

“Yeah, he used to be the beast,” says Hadrian. “I think he’s a little possessive.”

“Ah,” Rosana says wisely. He gets the impression that she’s laughing at him. “Well, I’m sure the two of you can talk after you get more rest.”

“I’ve spent so much time asleep,” Hadrian complains, but he’s already falling back asleep. “Rosana?”

“Yes, Hadrian?”

“I love you.”

Her palm presses down on his chest, firm and warm. “I love you too.”

#

When he’s healed enough to sit up, Hella comes to see him. She brings his sword and says “Never use this again, but also don’t leave home without it.”

“Thanks,” Hadrian says. “You made it out okay?”

She smiles. She looks exhausted. “Yeah, I did. You’re lucky your wolf-man knows how to dress wounds.”

“Rosana said he was a man again.”

“He is. I came outside and saw him trying to wrap your chest.”

“How?”

Hella shrugs. “I mean, magic is fickle bullshit, right?”

It’s such a comfortingly Hella thing to say that it makes Hadrian laugh. “Yeah, it is.”

“But it saved you, so I’ll put up with it for today.”

“Yeah,” Hadrian says. “Me too. Thank you for coming for me.”

“Always,” Hella says, and then pauses. “But don’t… do that again.”

“I won’t,” Hadrian says. He means it.

#

The last time Hadrian sees Samot is the first day he’s healed enough to be back on his feet. He’s walking outside Sunder’s house and finds Samot in the backyard, sitting on a lawn chair. “Hi,” he says, although it doesn’t feel like enough.

Samot smiles wanly. “Bed rest doesn’t suit you. It seems unnatural.” His tone is glib, but he sounds shaken, underneath everything.

Hadrian slowly lowers himself into the chair next to Samot. “You’re back.”

“I’m back,” Samot agrees. “It appears that my request that you kill the wolf was… hasty.”

“You made a guess based on what you knew.”

“I guessed wrong.”

“Did the wolf remember the dreams?” Hadrian asks, suddenly curious. “Did you know?”

Samot smiles, sad and gentle. “I remembered everything when I could not say it, and nothing when I could speak. You brought me back to myself.”

“I think you came back to yourself on your own.” Hadrian pauses. “I might’ve given you the push you needed, though.”

Samot doesn’t laugh at that. His eyes flick from Hadrian’s bandaged side to his own hands back to Hadrian’s face. “I would’ve liked to come back sooner,” he says, and Hadrian can hear the apology lying underneath.

He nods slowly. “I understand,” he says. “You’re not going to stay, are you?”

“No, I’m not.” Samot leans back in his chair. “Now that I have the memory and the means to travel again, I’d like to find my husband. It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen him.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“I hear you won’t be travelling anymore.”

“I won’t.”

“A shame,” Samot muses. “He would like you. But I understand.”

Hadrian shifts to face Samot more fully. “Be careful out there,” he says. He doesn’t quite mean it to come out as a plea but it does, plaintive and low. “It’s not safe.”

Samot lifts both of his hands, slowly, to rest on both sides of Hadrian’s face. Hadrian closes his eyes. When Samot’s lips brush against him it’s gentle, barely a kiss at all, but it’s still there. His lips are warm, and soft, and Hadrian can feel Samot’s breath against his mouth as he says, “I know, Hadrian. My brave knight.”

“I’m not a knight.”

“Well, you’re my knight.”

Hadrian smiles and opens his eyes. Samot’s face is very close to his own, and his eyes are beautiful and sad and steady. He leans forward, just for a second, to kiss Samot more firmly. He knows, even now, that he will never have this again. So he might as well have it once.

Samot smiles and sits back in his chair, hands slipping down to fold in his lap. “Stay with me for a while,” he says. It’s an invitation, but it’s mostly a goodbye.

“I will,” Hadrian says, and he does.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on Tumblr/Twitter @waveridden!


End file.
